About the Writer
Charlton "Charlie" Brooker (born 3 March 1971) is an English satirist and broadcaster. He has worked in television, radio, print, and online media. In addition to writing credits for programmes such as Brass Eye, The 11 O'Clock Show and Nathan Barley, he has presented a number of television shows, including Screenwipe, Gameswipe, Newswipe, Weekly Wipe and 10 O'Clock Live. He also writes a comment piece for The Guardian, and is one of four creative directors of comedy production company Zeppotron. Brooker is also noted for his five-part horror drama Dead Set, which was nominated for the 2009 Best Drama Serial BAFTA and also created the tragicomedy drama series Black Mirror (writing and co-writing episodes one and two of the first series and all three episodes of the second series). His style of humour is acerbic, savage, profane and often controversial with surreal elements and a consistent satirical pessimism. He won the 2009Columnist of the Year award at the British Press Awards,[1] the 2010 Best Entertainment Programme Award for Newswipe from the Royal Television Society, and has received three British Comedy Awards; Best Newcomer in 2009, Best Comedy Entertainment Show Award for Newswipe in 2011 and the Best Comedy Entertainment Personality award in 2012. Early life and education Brooker was born in Reading, Berkshire[2] growing up in the village of Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, Oxfordshire. His grandparents organised a Quaker meeting house.[3] He first worked as a writer and cartoonist for Oink!, a comic produced in the late 1980s.[4] After attending Wallingford School, Brooker attended the Polytechnic of Central London (which became the University of Westminsterduring his time there) – studying for a BA in Media Studies. He claims he did not graduate because his dissertation was written on video games, which was not an acceptable topic.[4][5] Career Print Brooker wrote for PC Zone magazine in the mid-1990s.[6] Aside from games reviews, his output included the comic strip "Cybertwats" and a column titled "Sick Notes", where Brooker would insult anyone who wrote in to the magazine and offered a £50 prize to the "best" letter. In February 1998, one of Brooker's one-shot cartoons caused the magazine to be pulled from the shelves of many British newsagents. The cartoon was titled "Helmut Werstler's Cruelty Zoo" and professed to be an advert for a theme park created by a Teutonic psychologist for children to take out their violent impulses on animals rather than humans. It was accompanied by photoshoppedpictures of children smashing the skulls of monkeys with hammers, jumping on a badger with a pitchfork, and chainsawing an orang-utan, among other things. The original joke was supposed to be at the expense of the Tomb Raider games, known at the time for the number of animals killed, but the original title, "Lara Croft's Cruelty Zoo", was changed for legal reasons. In October 2008, Brooker and several other ex-writers were invited back to review a game for the 200th issue. Brooker reviewed Euro Truck Simulator. Brooker began writing a TV review column titled "Screen Burn" for The Guardian newspaper's Saturday entertainment supplement The Guide in 2000, a role he continued through to October 2010. From the autumn of 2005, he wrote a regular series of columns in The Guardian supplement "G2" on Fridays called "Supposing", in which he free-associated on a set of vague what-if themes. From October 2006 this column was expanded into a full-page section on Mondays, including samples from TVGoHome and Ignopedia, an occasional series of pseudo-articles on topics mostly suggested by readers. The key theme behind Ignopedia was that, while Wikipedia is written and edited by thousands of users, Ignopedia would be written by a single sub-par person with little or no awareness of the facts.[7] On 24 October 2004, he wrote a column on George W. Bush and the forthcoming 2004 US Presidential Election[8] which concluded: The Guardian withdrew the article from its website and published and endorsed an apology by Brooker.[9] He has since commented about the remark in the column stating: Brooker left the "Screen Burn" column in 2010. In the final column,[11] he noted how increasingly difficult he found it to reconcile his role in mainstream media and TV production with his writing as a scabrous critic or to objectively criticise those he increasingly works and socialises with. Longtime covering contributor Grace Dent took over the column. He continues to contribute other articles to The Guardian on a regular basis, and wrote a weekly comment column for the G2 supplement until May 2013. Dead Set Main article: Dead Set Brooker wrote Dead Set, a five-part zombie horror thriller for E4 set in the Big Brother house.[23] The show was broadcast in October 2008 to coincide with Halloween and was repeated on Channel 4 in January 2009 to coincide with Celebrity Big Brother, and again for Halloween later that year.[24] It was produced by Zeppotron, which also produced Screenwipe. Brooker told MediaGuardian.co.uk it comprised a "mixture of known and less well known faces" and "Dead Set is very different to anything I've done before, and I hope the end result will surprise, entertain and appall people in equal measure." He added that he has long been a fan of horror films and that his new series "could not be described as a comedy". "I couldn't really describe what it is but it will probably surprise people," Brooker said, adding that he plans to "continue as normal" with his print journalism. Jaime Winstone starred as a runner on the TV programme, and Big Brother presenter Davina McCall guest starred as herself.[25] Dead Set received a BAFTA nomination for Best Drama Serial.[26] Category:Writer Category:Dead Set